The Young Ones

There were a lot of young faces on show in this match - Manchester United started with an average age of just 24. This may go some way to explaining how they were very nearly knocked out by Ajax. In amongst the action, the youthful Slovenian referee Damir Skomina was calm, composed and (nearly always) correct.

Some discussion points
There were no really big decisions for Skomina to make in this match. I agreed with most of his free kicks and advantages, the three yellow cards were all merited and he worked well with the assistants. However, there are a couple of things which I think he got wrong. Firstly, Rafael should have been cautioned for the dive he performed to try and win a penalty early in the first half. Next, I felt there was a very obvious deliberate handball in the build up to Ajax's fist goal. Skomina seemed to be in an ideal position to spot this, but for some reason did not award a free kick to United. And finally, there should have been more than two minutes at the end. Skomina obviously thought United were wasting time because he cautioned Evans, and there were five substitutions during the half, so I would have expected at least three but probably four minutes stoppage time.